Starting from Scratch
by brynnigan1312
Summary: Twenty years after Ash begins his Pokemon journey, Pokemon are considered dangerous and training them has been outlawed. But in an attempt to escape her arguing parents, Mara leaves home and discovers a Pokemon egg. When Mara's father takes a government position, she is forced to leave home and unknowingly begins her own Pokemon journey in the Sinnoh region.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One:

Mara glared down at the egg on her bed, wondering what had possessed her to bring the cursed thing home. On any other day, she wouldn't have found it at all, but today of all days, her parents decided to argue. So Mara was where she always went when they started: the wall.

Mara walked, trailing one hand along the ragged stone wall, gazing off into space. Her footsteps echoed across the empty alleyway, just one more reminder that she was alone in her tiny little world. She sighed. Her parents probably had her best interests in mind, but a part of her wondered how they had ever fallen in love in the first place. She turned back to the city, staring through the streets in the direction of her house and slumped against the wall.

Or at least, she tried to lean against the wall. Instead, she hit the ground with a thud, gasping as the air was knocked from her lungs. When she sat up, she gaped in amazement at the alley she had been walking down only moments earlier. There was a hole in the wall, and she had just fallen through it. It was jagged and chipped, as though the person who made it had been having a little too much fun with a sledgehammer. Masonry littered the grass outside the wall, and everything was dusted with a thin covering of white powder. Mara couldn't help but wonder who could have been so desperate to sneak out of the city that they would make such a violent escape. After all, the walls were there to keep danger out of the city, not to keep people in.

Pokémon were the reason for the high walls and steel gates that enclosed the city. Pokemon were wild monsters that wielded powerful elemental attacks. Although some were reclusive and harmless, many were hostile and could be deadly to humans. Once, a strong-willed few had been able to control the beasts, but training Pokemon for domestic use had been strictly forbidden. In order to protect the city, the government had surrounded the cities of Sinnoh in supposedly impenetrable walls, preventing anything from coming in.

Or going out, thought Mara, and she was surprised that she had never thought about it that way before. Nor had she even considered breaking out, remembering the warnings that they had been given in school. Apparently, the escapee hadn't bothered to listen to the administration or the government, because he had gone right ahead and broken their unbreakable wall. And now Mara could see why.

The forest grew strong, green and wild, vines and ivy coating their branches and stubborn brush tangled the roots of the mighty trees. The forest was wild and beautiful, and Mara couldn't help but compare it to the weak and stunted trees in the city. She felt drawn to the forest, in spite of her parents' warnings about its dangers. Mara hesitated for a moment, cautionary tales niggling at the back of her mind. But in the end, curiosity won out, and she tramped off into the woods.

Twenty minutes later, Mara finally had to admit that she was completely lost. Everywhere she turned, the trees looked exactly the same. The once beautiful forest now seemed ominous and foreboding. She jumped at every creak and shuffle and snapped twig, swinging at imaginary enemies. Fear crept up her spine and she whirled around, trying to remember which way she had come. Soon, a frenzied panic took hold of her, and she began to run, hopelessly searching for the path that she had taken. Tripping on rocks and roots, she crashed through the underbrush. Branches grabbed at her hair and thorns slashed her legs, as though the forest despised her intrusion.

But her panic began to ebb as her breathing became harsh and ragged, a burning pain shot up her legs and she slowed to a trot. Brushing away a final branch, she came to an exhausted stop in a grassy clearing. The panic was replaced by an overwhelming dread, as she realized that she would probably be lost forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Lost forever. Mara lay on the ground, curled up into a ball. She shuddered with sobs, her mind a panicked fugue of fears. She would be attacked and eaten, no one would find her body, her parents would be devastated when they couldn't find her. Or would they be angry? What if they hated her for running away and never coming home? Would they stop loving her? Would they even bother to look for her, to find her body, to have a funeral, to ever speak about her again? These thoughts brought on another fit of sobs. As she condemned herself to abandonment, another rush of tears dripped onto the grass.

A twig snapped. Mara's head jerked up, crying ceased, body completely still. Her eyes searched desperately for the source of the noise, but she couldn't risk moving. For a long moment, she sat there, completely frozen. At last she slowly turned her head, expecting to stare her death in the face.

But there was nothing. Mara stood, wiping her wet, snot covered face with one sleeve. Primal fear had erased her imagined worries, and now that the danger had passed, her original curiosity came rushing back. For the first time, she studied the glade, and after a moment, declared it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Grass rippled peacefully in the fall breeze, and she could see the leaves on the oaks in the forest beginning to flush red. Wildflowers clung stubbornly to the last vestiges of summer, erupting from the ground in explosions of red, purple and orange. In the center of it all sat a bubbling spring, filled with leafy green plants and smooth, round stones that sparkled beneath the crystal clear water.

Mara wandered to the edge of the spring, flinging off her shoes and plunking her feet into the cool water. Worries completely forgotten, she kicked droplets into the air, watching the tiny rainbows that they made before splashing back into the pool. The plants swirled peacefully in the little eddies that she made, their emerald leaves dancing little underwater pirouettes. She glanced lazily around the clearing, and her eyes fixed on something round nestled in the grass on the other side of the glade. Her eyes widened as she realized what it was. Apparently, she had not been alone in the glade after all.

There, nestled snugly in the grass, lay a small egg. Mara stood and cautiously stepped toward the egg. But suddenly, remembering the danger, she stopped, dropping to the ground and curling her head between her knees. But when no raging Pokémon mothers came rushing in to protect their baby, she picked herself off the ground and glanced around sheepishly as though to make sure that no one was watching.

After five minutes of tip-toeing and evasive maneuvering, Mara finally reached the egg. She still stood two feet away, her muscles spring-loaded, eyes wide with fear and excitement. After checking over her shoulder one more time, she reached out a hand, palm flat, fingers outstretched. She took a deep breath, and after a moment's hesitation, touched her fingers to the egg's smooth shell.

The egg was cool, and yet somehow seemed to radiate an inner fire. She could sense the tiny creature inside, feel its heartbeat, could almost see the blood pulsing through its tiny veins, and imagined the electricity that sparked in its brain. From a distance, she had almost thought that it was a rock, but now, touching it as she was, it was impossible to ignore the powerful force that it exuded. And yet, it seemed so vulnerable, with no means of defense save for a thin, fragile shell. It seemed unfair to Mara that the creature's fate was in the hands of such a weak wall. There were no stones to protect this little one, no turrets or steel gates. It was all alone in the world, and she couldn't help but feel sorry for it.

She couldn't just leave it there alone, where it would grow cold and weak, or where something could crush its brittle shell underfoot. Mara's newfound sympathy for the egg wrestled with the ten years of warnings from her parents, teachers and friends. "It'll hatch, and then where will you be?" asked her logical side, "you can't just teach a giant, vicious animal to behave in a tiny house in the city. And besides, the police will arrest you and throw you in jail. And they'll kill the Pokémon, too. You're better off leaving it here to die a quiet and painless death." But her parents hadn't felt the tiny life inside the egg. They hadn't seen how helpless and alone it was. She couldn't just leave it there to die. And what if it hatched? It obviously didn't have a family. It would be born into a cruel and heartless world, and with no one to teach it how to survive, it would probably die in minutes anyway. Both sides of her roared back and forth at each other, both determined to find an argument to silence the other.

All through her internal bickering, Mara kept both hands firmly on the egg, feeling the warmth, the life, which pulsed from the egg. The creature's tiny pulse weakened the resolve of her sensible side, and in the end, the warmth dissolved its arguments, warnings and fears. Ignoring the laws that she would break and the danger that would she put herself in, Mara seized the egg with both hands, wrapping it in her shirt and slipping the bundle into her backpack. Pushing her doubts aside, she shouldered her pack and, determination renewed, began her search for a road home.


End file.
